I have a pink triangle on my school bag. I patched it there myself. The
edges are frayed and the dark pink it once was has now faded, but it
represents more than any fabric or hue could signify. To my generation
it is a symbol of unity. It represents queer people everywhere and is
indicative of the progression of the gay community towards equality.
However, the original meaning of the pink triangle was anything but
progressive. It oppressed and demeaned thousands of men who, under
Hitler’s reign, were demonized for their supposedly “perverse”
practices.
When Hitler became the head of the SA, he placed Ernst Rohm as the
overseer of the day-to-day activities of the organization. However, in
1934, Rohm’s desire to equalize the SA with the Nazi Party and the SS
marked him as a threat to Hitler’s political and military agenda. On
June 30th, 1934, alternately known as the “Night of the Long Knives”,
Rohm, along with many of his loyal Brownshirts, was murdered by SS
forces under Hitler’s direction. In order to justify the massacre, the
Nazi party claimed that Rohm’s homosexuality was an encroachment on the
moral principles of the Nazi regime, despite the fact that Rohm had been
openly gay throughout his involvement with the Nazi Party. It was this
act that would serve as the basis for the annihilation of the German
homosexual community.2

On June 28, 1935, the Ministry of
Justice revised Paragraph 175, separating the previous law into three
distinct portions, which dealt with: lewdness, severe lewdness, and
bestiality. Under the original law only sodomy was punishable. However,
under the new wording, the grounds for arrest and conviction were
greatly broadened to include even the offense of thinking of homosexual
acts. This extreme change in the law led to the subsequent arrest of
over 100,000 men, and anywhere between 5,000 and 15,000 deportations to
concentration camps.8

Once at these camps, men charged with
the crime of homosexuality were forced to wear pink triangles, denoting
them as sexual perverts and deviants. However, this pink patch did more
than separate them in the eyes of the camp personnel; the pink also
ostracized them from their fellow inmates. For instance, Heinz Heger
said, "Our block senior and his aides were 'greens,' i.e. criminals.
They look[ed] it, and behaved like it too. Brutal and merciless towards
us 'queers', and concerned only with their own privelege and advantage,
they were as much feared by us as the SS.”2 Clearly the brutality faced
by homosexual convicts came from both those in charge as well as their
fellow inmates and completely deteriorated any hopes of a support system
within the concentration camp.

After the liberation of concentration
camp inmates, many of the groups that had been victimized by the “Final
Solution” were able to procure restitution for the brutality they had
undergone. However, homosexuals were not among those able to seek
reparations.1 Under the German penal code, homosexuality was not
decriminalized until 1969.7 Furthermore, it was not until 1996 that
class action suits against the German government for reparations
included homosexuals as a victimized group.4

I never knew any of this until
recently. Every year since 6th grade, I had been studying the Holocaust,
and every year the class discussed the systematic destruction of Jews
throughout Europe. The political prisoners had been brought up once or
twice, the Gypsies fleetingly mentioned, but never homosexuals. Due to
the fact that homosexuality is so stigmatized in our society, many
teachers have passed over it. They have managed to gloss over more than
10,000 people. It is only through my own private study that I have
become aware of another facet of Hitler’s terror. And while I would hope
that everyone would seek out such information, so as to be well
informed, I am most definitely in the minority. This ignorance to an
entire group of Holocaust victims is unacceptable and it is our duty to
bring to light this virtually unknown part of the Holocaust. As time
moves on, we become more removed. We are touched only by the awing
unfamiliarity and lack of personal connection. The ghostly faces of camp
inmates and the terrible stories of starvation and abuse become little
more than primary sources for a history lesson. Holocaust remembrance
must not be a weeklong event; it must travel within us as we live
everyday. It is only through active memory and awareness that we are
able to truly learn the lessons of the Shoah.

Many would argue that we are doing all
we can to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Unfortunately,
there is a plethora of examples clearly indicating that humanity has not
done all it can to prevent future genocides, violations of human rights,
and irrational prejudice. From 1975 to1979, the Khmer Rouge murdered 1.7
million Cambodians, nearly 21% of Cambodia’s population. In 1994,
800,000 Tutsis and Hutus were murdered in less than 100 days.3 Brian
Williamson, a proponent of gay rights in Jamaica and founder of J-FLAG,
was stabbed to death with a machete in June of 2004.6 On July 19th,
2005, Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari were hung in the city of Mashhad,
Iran after being charged with homosexual activities.5 Today there are
groups such as Aryan Nations, the KKK, National Alliance, and White
Aryan Resistance.

As students, we are the future and it
is up to us to vigorously strive toward preventing more instances of
discrimination and intolerance. We can avoid derogatory comments and
call out others who use them. Awareness groups can be started that focus
on spreading information and express solidarity in diversity. We can
write to our congress people about issues of civil discrimination.
Whatever the medium, the goal must always be awareness. After all, you
can’t fight something if you aren’t aware it exists.

And so, in an attempt to make others
aware, I stitched a pink triangle onto my book bag. It is the heritage
of thousands of men in a few thousand threads; a heritage I carry with
me. But, it is not only on my bag. It is in my soul, in everything that
I am and all that I strive to be. It is a legacy that transcends time,
race, creed, and gender, and requires me to be a voice against hate.